Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Mr. McGibby writes "After the announcement of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft this morning workers voiced their concern with the deal by walking out of Nokia facilities. It is believed that as many as a thousand workers marched out today (or took the day off using flex time) so that the company would know that they don't believe the partnership is in their best interest, even after CEO' Stephen Elop's startlingly frank 'burning platform' memo earlier this week." Looks like many investors felt the same way.

Actually I think it would be better to keep a job. Be honest, you wouldn't quit a paying job. Of course you meant that you'd start looking at the employment sites during your off time.

I don't think this will be the end of Nokia. If anything it may be the smartest thing they've done. They obviously been stagnate way too long and there are just too many handset manufacturers jumping on the android bandwagon. This leaves Nokia with the option of being just another lemming going with Android or differentiating themselves by hooking up with Microsoft. Frankly going with Google or Microsoft is better than Nokia's status quo.

Everybody can guess exactly what is going on. M$ is paying off Nokia to install windows in a desperate bid to gain market share. How this back hander is being managed to effectively reduce the retail price of Nokia phones, is anyone's guess. perhpas M$ will pay all of Nokia's marketing costs, perhaps M$ is going to buy a whole lot of Nokia gear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia [wikipedia.org] at inflated prices, as they do more than just make phones.

Have you not read the news regarding the matter and yet care to comment? Yes, I must be new here...

1. Windows wants to gain market share. Nokia wants to gain market share. Nokia would've been too late to jump on the Android bandwagon and thus chose to differentiate by "creating" an "ecosystem" of its own, with Microsoft. It was stressed time and time again yesterday that for Nokia to succeed in this regard, Windows Phone must prevail.

2. It was explicitly stated that Nokia would pay royalties to Microsoft and that this would increase cost per sold unit, but at the same time it was stressed that they could make cuts in their own OS R&D, which is the biggest reason the people marched out: The locations mentioned in the news here are filled with thousands of Symbian developers.

3. Also, Elop has said several times that the deal is not only one-way. While Nokia's phone's would be using e.g. Bing, powered by Microsoft, they expect that when you use Bing maps, you might see something of the sort Bing maps, powered by Nokia, for Nokia is at the bleeding edge of navigational software, thanks to Navteq. Thus the details of the deal aren't as simple as you make it out to be.

I don't think that's true. We have our own mapping technology. note, this doens't mean we may have used some Nokia stuff from time to time in one way or anohter. But bing maps isn't just re-packaged Nokia stuff.
-foredecker

The E71 is excellent hardware, let down by Symbian. That's not a problem if Meego finally got to the market, but it was never taken seriously within Nokia. I'm sure there was so much political bickering within Nokia between the Maemo/Meego and Symbian camps that MS just waited till it hit the fans and came in to swoop the prize.

Indeed, I've been waiting for 5 years for Nokia to just pick Maemo already and get on with it. Now, since last April, I'm waiting for a Pandora handheld instead. It seems now that I made the right decision.

Shareholders? You're kidding, right? It took 5 or 6 years for the Xbox to break even, before that Microsoft was burning thru tens of millions every year just keeping the xbox afloat. But guess what? It paid off and now the xbox is a dominate player, perhaps even beating Sony with the new Kinect. Microsoft is dangerous because they can lose money for years and still continue to support something they believe will eventually work. Few other companies have that luxury.

It hasn't "paid off" until the money they got from the business is more than the money they put into building it. Otherwise, it's just money spent to ruin other people's good businesses, which isn't the achievement shareholders are looking for. ETA for XBox to unlock that achievement: never.

Shareholders? You're kidding, right? It took 5 or 6 years for the Xbox to break even, before that Microsoft was burning thru tens of millions every year just keeping the xbox afloat. But guess what? It paid off

Xbox division stopped making a loss, they did NOT start making profit (and wont for next ~10 years).No, earning more than you spend during one quarter doesnt count if you pumped $6B in R&D and marketing.Kinect alone was $600mil in marketing _before_ if even hit the shelves.

AMD as done well, so has NVIDIA, HP. Dell would have if they hadnt shot
themselves in the foot. So have many other OEMs and ODMs.
In the client space - it certainly isnt Linux or any other FOSS software
driving their business. Of course, Linux and LAMP are a strong competitors
in the server space - but certainly not dominant.

There are many, many Microsoft re-sellers and VARs that do quite well
working with Microsoft. By quite well I mean nicely profitable over long periods
of time.

Actually I think it would be better to keep a job. Be honest, you wouldn't quit a paying job. Of course you meant that you'd start looking at the employment sites during your off time.

Uhm yeah, if you're an American. See, Americans generally have 1. No (or little) savings and 2. Almost no safety net.

This means that if you object to something your company does, the only recourse is to passive-aggressively start sneaking around looking for other work - because you must be employed at all times, and not having a job is simply not an option. You can't actually, you know, make a stand or anything - your current life literally depends on the good graces of the company you work for, which means that you simply cannot do anything to piss them off unless you already have another company ready to take you in.

I mean, there's a reason why people call our current society "neo-feudalism".

The big difference is that Nokia has always made outstanding hardware, and lousy, terrible software. Apple, on the other hand, makes a near-perfect software experience and uses that to sell upmarket, beautifully designed hardware. It would be insane for Apple to use Android, but equally it was insane for Nokia to try to compete with Android. They should, two years ago, have embraced Android and thrown out as many slabs running it as they could, putting those Symbian and Meego talents onto Android, or just focusing on the beautiful hardware people expect these days. Instead they left this space to HTC, while complaining about Chinese manufacturers eating their low-end market.

Microsoft need Nokia desperately since they've lost HTC, but Nokia is committing suicide with this "partnership". It's like hitching your wagon to the Titanic.

Nokia could have played the smart move and catered to the entire market since they're not linked to anyone (aka innovation), instead they took a stupid decision and sided with a single company. Nobody cares that HTC makes android and windows phones, and HTC simply wins whenever either sell phones. Nokia could have done the same.

I can only question how much of this is related to Elop having worked for MS.

If Nokia's R&D plans have nothing better than Android then using Android would be better. But that wouldn't say good things about Nokia.

Nokia R&D didn't have anything better, and they still don't. Hence, Android was their best choice.

It's true that with Windows Phone 7, Nokia has fewer competitors, but that's because few companies want that turd. And with all that, Nokia still didn't manage to get any kind of exclusive deal or preferential treatment.

The summary is a tad misleading. It states that most who protested this work on the Symbian OS. So they are protesting because lots will probably lose their jobs. Not because they hold in their belief that the partnership is bad.

> Talking with friends that deal with handsets in retail they are starting to see "Android burnout" as customers have> been warned away from Android by the glut of CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) running Android and frankly barely> functional

That's not something the current amazing sales of Android devices suggests is happening elsewhere; perhaps your friends need to learn how to sell phones more effectively? No-one's going to turn down a HTC Desire just because some other company has produced an infer

This is misleading. This isn't a US labor work-action style of walkout, which is about influencing management. These folks knew they were likely losing their jobs and went home to consider their options and grasp the thing emotionally. Their work contract includes the flexibility to do this, which is a responsible and compassionate way to manage people.

And they deserve to lose their jobs if they put ideology ahead of making products people will spend money to have.

Sorry to deflate your rant against developers, but if you look at the marketshare for Windows 7 mobile devices [electronista.com], it seems clear that platform is something consumers won't spend money to have.

HTC was a nothing company that got lucky making a deal with a big partner. They had nowhere to go but up, and nothing Microsoft could take from them.

Nokia is a huge company that is selling its soul to the devil. I'm not talking about Microsoft: they've chosen the route of dying tech giants. They've refused Android because of their patent portfolio. It is one thing for a company to use patents while they continue to innovate, but when they give up innovation to focus on extortion, that's a death deal.

They could have chosen differently: they could have decided to make both Android and WP7 phones, and even continue with Symbian (although Symbian is dying). Samsung makes beautiful Android and WP7 phones. If anything, this deal most resembles SGI, giving up on their own excellent OS to run (what was then pathetic) WindowsNT on their machines. Not long after SGI became a shell of a company, with nothing but a large patent portfolio. RIP SGI. RIP Nokia.

HTC was never particularly successful in the mass market before Android. In the WinMo days, HTC phone targeted the poweruser that could live with WinMo's faults while it perfected the in-house hardware design and software customization skills. Basically, MS gave it a launching pad, but you have to give credit to HTC for their initiative, most Taiwanese WinMo partners wasn't able to see pass the fact that WinMo was a dead end. HTC saw this and tactically positioned itself in the Android camp, while paying lip service to Microsoft. The HD2 was the ultimate exercise in the futile attempt of polishing a turd.

In GSM markets, since the release of the Desire, things have been up and up for HTC. The Desire is the first real iPhone alternative for the casual smartphone user. It's easy to use, looks good, and can load apps from the Market fuss-free. Push email works well and you get to sync all of your important PIM details such as contacts and calendars for free. Navigation via Google Maps is not only free but ever improving.

MS has a history of hosing it's "partners". Sybase, threats to cutoff Intel's air supply, and the "Stinger" phone OS are some examples. As the saying goes, "If the lamb lies down with the lion, it better not fall asleep."

I worked at FTP Software(yes, by now you've never heard of them) when they partnered with Microsoft. The guy hired away from Apple said "Microsoft would never screw us." Everyone in the room laughed, then printed their resumes. The company did not last long.

One of the products FTP Software were to sell was Vermeer Technologies' Frontpage web page editor. But just as the boxes were shipping, Vermeer was bought by Microsoft and they had to put stickers on the boxes saying "Now Microsoft Frontpage"...

(I worked at a company selling network software at the time, including FTP Software's products.)

Nokia. No, not this OS deal, but in August 2009 ”The worldwide leader in software and the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer have entered into an alliance that is set to deliver a groundbreaking, enterprise-grade solution for mobile productivity. Today, Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop and Nokia’s Executive Vice President for Devices Kai Öistämö announced the agreement, outlining a shared vision for the future of mobile productivity. This is the first time that either company has embarked on an alliance of this scope and nature.”

The plan was to bring “Microsoft Office Mobile and Microsoft business communications, collaboration and device management software to Nokia’s Symbian devices.”

What happened? One and a half years later the same Stephen Elop announced that Symbian will be deprecated.

Of course it's a stupid idea. But what did they expect? They hired a former MS exec to be their CEO. Of course he would make them dependent on MS - that's the only thing the fool can be expected to know.

It's like SGI hiring a former HP exec to be their CEO and then killing off MIPS to move to Itanium - totally and utterly predictable because these guys only know the bubble they've been in for most of their corporate career. They can't "think outside of the box" because they are the box.

A Nokia executive once said that switching to Android would be like peeing your pants for warmth. It might help temporarily, but would turn your phones into commodities. Nokia would be forced to sell based on price alone!

I submit that going with WP7 is worse. It has all the disadvantages of Android in that your competitors can use it also, so it turns your phones into commodities. But it has none of the advantages - the extensive Android market, UI customization, and no OS licensing fee.

Using WP7 is like peeing your pants while Redmond gives you a golden shower.

Android is all about choice; you can either have no licensing fee, OR you can have "the extensive Android market." Those are mutually exclusive, though. Google charges for access to that market.

In fact, the numbers I've heard indicate that OEMs pay more to Google for each Droid (or similar) than they do to Microsoft for each WP7 phone. It's still only a few dollars each way, but Android is only free if you don't include *any* of Google's services on

In fact, the numbers I've heard indicate that OEMs pay more to Google for each Droid (or similar) than they do to Microsoft for each WP7 phone. It's still only a few dollars each way, but Android is only free if you don't include *any* of Google's services on it.

Of course you're ignoring the big elephant there in the corner. Who cares whether Microsoft charges less per handset than Google, given that just about no one the company's trying to sell phones to wants a Windows phone? What actually matters is that Android phones are actually desirable, while customers' opinions regarding Windows phones have been spiraling around the drain for 2-3 years now.

If you look at the entire line-up, including low-end HTC phones and maybe even cheap Chinese junk, you'll see that it really only has a few gems.

Low-end HTC phones have gotten great reviews. There are also great low-end Sony phones, and even low-end prepaid phones. And they all run the same software. There is nothing even remotely like that for WP7.

It used to be the case that if you wanted a $150 (unsubsidized) smart phone, some low-end Symbian was the only choice. These days, you can get an Android pho

I tend to like peeing in my pants to stay warm as much as the next guy but I don't think that's going to resolve anything. There are two paths that companies can take to make a hardware/platform successful. You can either act like a pope and tell the world that it's the single most greatest thing in all existence and everyone will follow you like a cult, or you can create a developer friendly environment that makes your heart warm from working with the system. Microsoft has never come out with software that

Protip: if you don't want to sound like an astroturfer, don't say things that could have come from a Microsoft marketing pamphlet; sure they want you to believe that "XNA is an incredible environment," but it's not that much better or worse than any other graphics framework.

Also saying that another platform is bad because it uses Java just shows your inexperience. Even if you don't particularly like Java (I don't), it is certainly an adequate language. It's a n00b mistake. People who love programming wil

Microsoft has never come out with software that makes your teeth crunch for software development

I really wish that was true (and appreciate that there are people out there who honestly believe it). Alas, you're mistaken.

Here's an exercise for you. Find a nearest developer with some experience extending SharePoint. Ask him what he thinks about the API, the documentation, and overall design. Count the expletives. Zen will be that much closer.

Before starting at Nokia, Elop worked for Microsoft from January 2008 to September 2010 as the head of the Business Division, responsible for the Microsoft Office line of products, and as a member of the company's senior leadership team. Before this, he was the COO of Juniper Networks, the president of worldwide field operations at Adobe Systems, and the CEO of Macromedia until acquisition by Adobe.----

Lots of CEOs,CIOs, etc. bring in old workmates in their new workplace. While the existing relationship simplifies trust and reporting, things don't always go to plan, as folks don't really know workmates that well. I wonder is this is similar. He knew Ballmer and decided to forge an alliance based on a past work relationship. Or perhaps, one of the big reasons for his hire was his relationship with the Microsoft leadership team.

The Nokia execs and some tech writers make the case that Nokia thrives by selling very low end, but very robust phones in the hundreds of millions to the 3rd world where a modern smart phone wouldn't survive a day. They make the case that the Internet will be brought to developing nations via cell phones...low end cell phones, not high end smart phones.

It's a failed vision.

It is the vision of yesterday and today, but not of tomorrow. The "low end" of today won't exist tomorrow. Smart phones are advancing at such a pace that in the very near future none of the drawbacks they have today for developing nations (not rugged, very low battery life, high cost, etc) will still hold true. The market for low end voice/text-only cell phones will get taken over by low end smart phones....and chances are they'll be running Android, not Windows 7.

Not really, in current smartphones, the screen itself costs upwards of $20 I believe. Whereas non smartphones are available for less than $20.
Assuming that the cost of an Android phone comes down to say $30, the price of a non smartphone will most prob. go down to $5 or so(only a tiny monochrome screen, cheaper processor,smaller battery-- infact one of the phones launched for approx$50 here has a standby time of 30 days, and the option of using AA cells in an emergercy)
You need to live in a developing nation to know the needs..

>Not really, in current smartphones, the screen itself costs upwards of $20 I believe.

And what will a similar screen cost in 3 years? Probably $5. Tomorrow's smartphones will be as cheap as or cheaper than today's featurephones. Maybe everybody in the developing world won't be able to afford one, but hundreds of millions of people certainly will.

Motorola just announced an Android phone that can be hooked up to a docking station and connect to a monitor and full sized keyboard for use as a little computer. What happens in the developing world when your $50 smartphone can also double as your office and/or home computer? Suddenly that $50 smartphone looks like a pretty incredible deal.

Hundreds of millions of people, fine... that's already the case with present sub 20% share of userbase, with Symbian alone shipping 100+ million last year. Now compare it to, currently, 5+ billion of mobile subscribers. Certainly 6 before not too long (most of them not having own monitor, BTW; or dependable access to electricity)

Don't apply your experiences from very atypical place to the rest of the world. Don't listen to pundits doing likewise. I'm sure you think iPod was the dominating mp3 player world

MS want to go after Android. With an ex-MS man at the helm of Nokia, I'm not surprised they have pushed this deal through (especially since MS have managed to piss of their other handset manufacturers, and they have in turn jumped to Android). It may hurt Android market share very briefly, but I'll wager it won't be for very long before Nokia dumps WinPhone7 if this deal even goes through.

MS is trying to play catch-up with Apple and Android, and is losing badly. Wasn't Elop complaining the other day that Nokia was stuck playing catch-up? How can throwing their lot in with MS help them? Unless Elop is playing this deal with MS, so he has a magic bullet against Apple, I can't see their market position getting any better.

I do have to wonder if this deal is more about solving Nokia's legal battles with Apple. Surely MS will happily hand over patent licenses if Nokia is going to make WInPhone7 devices. Not only would this potentially void some of Apple's patent claims against Nokia, but even if Apple won in the ITC, the devices it is seeking an injunction against will not be around much longer. On top of that, MS would see a handy market boost if the ITC found in favour of Nokia and placed an injunction against the GSM iPhone. There is a reason Apple is trying to kill GSM and pick up CDMA: they probably see they aren't going to win the GSM patent lawsuits that Nokia have filed against them. In terms of the Apple vs Nokia battle, Nokia aligning themselves with Microsoft is an almost perfect match. I'd say that there is a whole lot more going on behind the scenes of this deal, in terms of patent cross-licensing, but Nokia won't reveal that until they get in a courtroom.

Given the sharholder and employee revolt against this decision, Elop may not be around much longer to see it through.

TFSummary makes reference to the "burning platform". Here is the "burning platform" spiel from Stephen Elop (Nokia CEO) in its entirety. Blame the lack of paragraphs on slashdot's new, stupid lack of formatting. I'm too lazy to do it myself paragraph by paragraph.

“There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.
As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.
He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.
We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.
Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe.
I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.
And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.
For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.
In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.
And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.
Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets.
While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.
The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.
We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, b

That would not in any excuse breach of fiduciary duty. I have trouble believing the shareholders wanted Elop to drive the company straight over a cliff. They may have had the impression he intended to act in their interest, as is required by law.

The 1000 people who staged a walkout in Tampere, Finland were mostly Symbian developers who are protesting/scared for their jobs. As someone who lives in Finland and works with mobile devices for a living, this makes me plain angry. Nokia has 1500+ Symbian developers in Tampere and 500+ in Salo, that's over 2000 developers working on Symbian. What the fuck have you people been doing for all these years? Where are the results? And now that finally the new CEO decided to shake things up before Nokia goes completely tits up, you are protesting? Gee, the bubble you've been living in bursting must've hurt - think of it, Symbian wasn't a good, user- and developer-friendly environment you've brainwashed yourself into thinking it was.

It really was/is cringe-worthy, how out of touch you people were. Not 3 months ago, I was talking to some Nokia developers and they were keeping a straight face while touting the N8 as some kind of an amazing device and downplaying the Apple and Android ecosystem and talking how "Symbian added value to the user-expience". I kid you not!

These were kind of my thoughts, but it's nice to see them reiterated by someone a bit closer to the situation. Symbian, as great as it was, has sat stagnant for years. I've often wondered what the development team was doing myself; however, when you put it into perspective of thousands of developers, it really makes no sense.

I think the partnership with Microsoft could be strategic for both companies. Microsoft really needs a company to grab onto WP7 and bring it full force to the market. HTC is the biggest pusher of the OS at the minute and they're basically just making handsets to entertain the small portion of the market that sees the potential in the WP7 platform. Nokia needs someone to keep them on life support. WP7 really is a terrific platform, especially seeing how young it is. People like to write off Microsoft, but they've come a long way as far as modernizing their brand goes. I, personally, look forward to potentially using a Nokia WP7 device some day. It's the only platform, other than WebOS (my current mobile OS), that really interests me.

I don't see what technical people working on Symbian have to do with the decisions that shape the direction that Symbian takes. They are mostly executants. If there's fault anywhere, it's at management level.

These people's reaction strikes me as the anger of someone who did all they could, even probably advised against management's poor choices, only to be ignored and finally discarded. They end up being the ones thrown out while the management keeps their jobs and gets a new toy to play with.

Nokia didn't invent Symbian, but it was their decision to use it. Back in the late 1990's, I was involved in a "top secret" project between Nokia and Psion, to bring Psion's EPOC operating system to a Nokia phone which was going to be the successor of the 9110 Communicator. The announcement of Symbian a few months later came as a complete surprise to us: "Oh, that's what we've been working on all the time?"

I still think it made a lot of sense back then. They just lost contact with the market (or maybe reality in general, as you and the GP implied) in the mid-2000's.

In the past, when we see company X do business with Microsoft, the only moaning we hear it limited to slashdotoid circles. This has got to be the first time I have ever seen where a body of employees and the stock market also agreed that doing business with Microsoft was a bad idea.

I haven't read through all of the comments yet, but I'm guessing someone has already started asking questions about "acting in the best interests of the share holders" matter. Of course, as Nokia is not a US company I'm guessing that's virtually a non-issue.

I hope the whole world is now paying attention to Microsoft's touch of death. Microsoft "partners" are usually just lambs lining up for the slaughter.

I have become excited about the Nokia N900, which is like an ordinary computer in that it runs a Debian-based Linux distribution (Maemo) with a software repository and everything. Now, I was eagerly waiting for the successor to the N900, running MeeGo (the successor to Maemo) and then they go and cancel it! Unless I settle for the ageing N900, there is no reason left for me to consider Nokia products anymore. I'll just go on with my current eight or nine years old phone, which can do all the things I actually need - GSM, SMS and alarm.
Killing their most flexible Linux operating system and initiating a collaboration with Microsoft - pfft, how unimpressive.

Firing someone in the EU takes an act of God, signed off by the Pope and Santa Claus.

Not really. It's just that firing someone in the US is easier than anywhere else in the world. It's just one more way we're behind the rest of the world.

Somehow, countries like Germany manage to be extremely worker-friendly and still lead the US in exports, and they don't need 20% underemployment to get there. By the way, that 20% underemployment we have in the US is by all expectations a permanent condition.

Any first year econ student can tell you that labor always proceeds capital. It was only after that condition was reversed in the US that we began our 30 year decline.

How is that "behind"? If I have slackers working for me, I don't want red tape standing in the way of my getting rid of them. This is especially true in small business, where margins are tight and you can't afford to pay people who don't produce.

The HDI is an average measure of basic human development achievements in a country. Like all averages, the HDI masks inequality in the distribution of human development across the population at the country level. This year’s report introduces the ‘inequality adjusted HDI (IHDI)’, a new measure for a large number of countries which takes into account inequality in all three dimensions of the HDI by ‘discounting’ each dimension’s average value according to its level of ineq

Seriously, making it difficult to fire someone is precisely why we have bad customer service from government institutions

Correlation does not imply causation. I'm quite happy with the service from my government, and though people might grumble occasionally to make conversation, polls indicate a high level of satisfaction among my compatriots.

It only gets worse when you put Unions into the mix.

A miniscule percentage of American workers have belonged to unions, and yet you are so ready to blame unions for your ills. Meanwhile there are countries where the vast majority of workers belong to a union, and the economy does fine and unemployment is not much higher than in the US at good times.

Just out of curiosity, what else were they going to do? Their current strategy of trying to rely on Symbian while transitioning to MeeGo is what got them into this trouble. Who knows when MeeGo will actually be ready or comparably polished to iOS and Android. Symbian isn't going to magically get much better than it is now, and where's it's at now has taken a lot of development.

The only other move was to use Android, but that caries its own set of risks. They mentioned the possibility of commoditization, which doesn't ring true to me, but is a possibility. Worse is the ongoing legal dispute over Android with Oracle. Google doesn't indemnify anyone, so if things go in Oracle's favor it may be the manufacturers having to foot the bill. Another "big if", but it's not something a company can outright dismiss.

It seems like almost everyone around here is heralding this is a horrible move. Does anyone actually have a suggestion for what Nokia should have done instead? A suggestion that doesn't include making different decision several years ago, magically making Symbian as good as Android or iOS, or somehow ignoring the mythical man month and getting MeeGo out the door in a reasonable time frame. It's easy to say a particular decision is crap when you're not expected to come up with a workable one yourself.

About what they did now, and just a bit more... Two alternatives to choose from:

1. Get the partner (Google or MS) accept adding Qt to the platform. That would have gained them a lot of developer love. Now they need to start a developer community completely from scratch, with old Nokia developers really pissed off, after the earlier Qt hype.

2. Get support for current partner platform (had it been Android or WP7) on Symbian and/or Meego. Like, Silverlight support for Symbian. This may not have gained them any Free Software love, but it would have given meaning to current Symbian line, and made a lot of commercial developers happy.

But now, they created a situation where they have no continuity between platforms, and bunch of angry developers who don't know what to do with Nokia now. I mean, isn't it practically like "if you want to develop for future Nokia, buy HTC now"? WTF.

I hope next week they'll take some corrective action. I actually hope it's been planned from the start, giving extra bad news first, then "clarifying" so bad news don't sound so horrible.

But if it is what it looks like now, who in their right mind is going to buy a Symbian phone? Nokia will run out of money before they get their first WP7 phone out of the door. But it's also quite believable that this was the plan, and MS will buy them out when the stock price is low enough.

Interestingly, that is only available for Symbian 5th edition devices (5xxx line started with 5800XM, N97 communicators), not for new Symbian^3 devices. Also, that seems to be... let's say politiley, limited version, compared to "desktop Silverlight". Wether that will change quickly, or not, will be quite revealing.

If that was true, they would have chosen Android. Microsoft isn't exactly a powerhouse when it comes to mobile devices. The top phone OSes are Android, RIM, Symbian, iOS, and Windows (Not necessarily in that order.) What I do know, is that Windows is on the very bottom of that list. RIM and iOS wouldn't be interested in Nokia, so it's either Android or WP7.

Android has a lot of potential, a hundred thousand times more than what Windows Phone 7 has. They better go big or go home.

FTFY

Xbox was nothing too when it got started. Sony had their playstation 2, Sega had their new Dreamcast that had a year jump on Xbox and Nintendo had the Gamecube. Xbox was ugly and clunky and offered no familiar Mario or Sonic or Final Fantasy games, yet it held in there and now it's a dominate player. You can't write Microsoft off so easily, they have a nasty habit of jumping in the middle of a fight and kicking ass.

1. Because manufacturers don't bother documenting hardware of providing drivers for more than one OS. (Ex: how Linux did run on iPAQ).2. Because (1) will remain true for proprietary phone control stack even if it won't for the rest of hardware.

Nokia's implementation of Meego was supposed to have the first completely open cellular interface. Good luck getting that with Microsoft lackey at the helm.

I worked with Stephen Elop back in the Macromedia days, starting with him being my boss^2, in the late 90's. I've always found him a fascinating exec to watch. In the four years or so I saw him at Macromedia, I watched him:1. Come into IT, get the existing CIO kicked out, become the CIO, and fuck IT up[0]; so they promoted him and2. He came into the Andromedia purchase, ran that business group for about a week which was long enough to fuck it up; so they promoted him and3. He started a brand new business group (Internal name... Whirlwind, I think?) for about three months which was long enough to fuck it up; so they promoted him...

The pattern reached its logical conclusion when he became CEO of the company and then... sold it to Adobe.

Stephen is the most perfect example I've ever seen of the sometimes-mythic "failing upward" tendency. He turns everything he touches to shit, and... then gets rewarded for it. It's like magic. I look forward to Nokia failing miserably, being sold to Microsoft, Stephen making billions out of the deal, and getting elected President of the United States, which he will drive into the ground, formally make into a Chinese colony like Hong Kong, and finally get promoted to God.

[0] Favorite story from that time: At the beginning of my time at Macromedia, our website was running on four servers, and I remember one time for a stupid reason three were not taking traffic. The first reason we found out about this was because someone mentioned the website was "a little slow." And we were taking tons of traffic. So Stephen came in and forced us to have a dynamic website. Hey, that's a GOOD idea. And then he decided we should use Broadvision for this. Which was a steaming pile of shit which BV recommended we reboot "as often as you can" because it was unstable. Which required horrific investments of money (we were buying Sun E4500s like there was no tomorrow and putting in 14GB of RAM in each -- back when Sun RAM was at around $7000 per GB). Which Stephen brought in KPMG to "help us" implement, which had the predictably hilarious results that anyone here who's worked with a big consulting shop has likely seen for themselves.

I worked with Stephen Elop back in the Macromedia days, starting with him being my boss^2, in the late 90's. I've always found him a fascinating exec to watch. In the four years or so I saw him at Macromedia, I watched him:1. Come into IT, get the existing CIO kicked out, become the CIO, and fuck IT up[0]; so they promoted him and2. He came into the Andromedia purchase, ran that business group for about a week which was long enough to fuck it up; so they promoted him and3. He started a brand new business group (Internal name... Whirlwind, I think?) for about three months which was long enough to fuck it up; so they promoted him...

This is exactly what corporate psychopaths do! It doesn't matter whether they are successful or not (they aren't as they don't have any actual business talent), they know how to manipulate people and will get promoted or get a better job. Even if they leave their previous company in tatters, they will find another job of equivalent level. And how do you recognize a psychopath? He/she leaves a trail of destruction after him/her.

I wish the world would wake up to the fact that corporate psychopaths are running most of the publicly traded companies.

I call it 'paradox of power'. Power is attracted by people, who wants power and nothing more. In fact, they want huge control over their lifes - and they are pushed by basic survival instinct. Problem with instincts that they are very primeval and without additional dose of intelligence will fail it's owner.

So, in traditional corporation, you can climb to the top 1) using your brain and charisma or 2) using your survival skill, which borders with sociopathy. So you can work hard and try to present your results in positive light *or* you can lie and cheat and walk over dead bodies of units/other people careers.

Problem with this setting is when true sociopath got their foot in this game, they can cause serious destruction and mayhem - and still get on the top. That's how they do - they play on other weaknesses, secrets, have no remorse or even sense of accomplishment. They just do things for doing sake. For aim sake. Because underneath it is all about survival. They will do absolutely anything - just to survive. I call it a survive instinct glitch.

If corporation have been long enough in existence, top of it will consist of such "survivors", which will cheer on such guys like Elop. That's why they recognize their kind and promote it, thinking that it will cause survival of their company too.

As for any paradox, it barely makes a sense. But that's how human mind is built.

Unfortunately, good phones only go so far when nobody's buying them. People don't want good phones, they want flashy apps.

This recent story [slashdot.org] would seem to indicate otherwise. Dumbphones are cheap, tiny and durable. There will always be a market for that.

I carry around two phones, one personal and one for business. My personal dumbphone has survived through 3 different business smartphones and it is still going strong. The batteries still last a week, while I can hardly get my iPhone to last more than a day. Maybe that is why the manufactures prefer smartphones - they don't last nearly as long and so you have to keep buying new

Nokia still does make good hardware but their software is nowhere near competitive with more advanced platforms. The E7x series performed its job brilliantly and had good battery life but they were really designed for a very specific function. When people complain about Nokia's, they complain about high end Nokia's like N8's which really are shite, because the OS is shite whilst the H

You obviously have never used Qt. If you had then you would understand the potential that it has. Check out Qt and QtQuick. You can do amazing things in a few lines of code in QtQuick. There are lots of youtube examples, check it out. One example was a complete graphically rich game, samegame [youtube.com], which is one of the QtQuick examples. Length of source code: 300 lines. Runs on mobiles, windows, linux, not sure about mac. This was an early example, recent stuff is more jaw dropping.

I've been waiting for a post-N900 MeeGo device for a while now. The N900 is a good pilot device for MeeGo, but it isn't quite ready for prime time. I'm still considering an N900 as a geek toy / personal smartphone, but I was hoping for an updated platform with an updated MeeGo.

I really hope they do come out with at least one more MeeGo device, when I read about this MS partnership, I expected it was the death knell for MeeGo. I hope it's not.

I would choose an Android, Microsoft, HP, RIM or even Apple ahead of Symbian. It was great for smartphones three years ago, but who would choose it today?

Agreed. Symbian as an OS isn't that bad. The symbian UI and menu structure is terrible, they simply failed to keep up.

5 years ago Nokia was by far the largest in the smartphone business. That made them lazy and slow to react. Along comes a company that decided to do touchscreens properly with a clean uncluttered UI and Nokia failed to respond.